Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking If we lined up these three phones in a ‘Coke vs Pepsi’ style blind taste test, we doubt you’d pick the price difference being as extreme. The size, the shape, the feeling of the A52 all give the impression that it is a much more expensive phone than it is. Fewer pixels should mean a lower quality picture, but this doesn’t matter as much on small screens like this. You’d notice a softness in the image if the screen was 20-inches or more, like a computer monitor, but it is all but impossible to see any loss of quality in the A52. The design of the handset is simple but fetching. Our review unit is the ‘Awesome Violet’ variant, and it is a lovely soft purple colour. The back of the phone is covered in a matte-feel plastic which I quite like. It isn’t as eye-catching as a glass back, but it’s nice to hold, and I suspect it may survive knocks and drops better than glass too. The three cameras here include a 64-megapixel shooter for most of your everyday shots, a 12-megapixel sensor with an ultrawide lens and a dedicated 5-megapixel camera for macro photos (super close-up shots). My experience with the camera in the A52 was uneventful, which is a bit of a backhanded compliment but it sums up what you can expect. The camera app is the same as the one you’ll find in any new Samsung phone; you get the same Pro mode controls, the same filters and features and the same shooting modes. The photos I took with the A52 were all quite good. The auto-focus is fast and mostly accurate, and the depth of field creates great portraits. My only complaint is that Samsung’s ‘scene optimiser’ feature dials up the saturation so much that it can change the colour in some photos entirely. This is turned on by default, but I’d recommend you find the option in the camera settings and switch it off. During my time with the A52, using it as my everyday phone, I didn’t notice any instances where the phone fell below my expectations. Apps load fast, multitasking is swift and I didn’t experience any crashes. The A52 is definitely fast enough. The phone comes with Android 11 installed and the Samsung One UI launcher, which is now one of our favourite Android UI mods. There is an under-screen fingerprint scanner, which could be a tad faster and more accurate, and face recognition for unlocking the phone. The one thing that did bug me was the number of bloatware apps installed out of the box. During setup there is an option to install several apps, which I refused, but when I checked the app drawer later, there were nine other apps pre-installed. Some people may appreciate having one or some of these apps installed as a time-saver, but there’s something off about being advertised to on a product that you paid for. We realise that the A52 is a cheaper phone, but that doesn’t mean we expect to have ads on our phones. Keeping the lights on is a big 4500mAh capacity battery, and with this, we routinely enjoyed about two full days between charges. This might be a day and a half on heavy use days, but never less. It’s not just the enormous battery that produces this result either, it’s the combination of everything we’ve discussed to this point. The lower-powered processor and the lower resolution screen and key to drawing out the battery life to its maximum. If you have been looking for a phone that lasts longer than a day, the A52 should be on your shopping list. The A series is fast becoming the Samsung handsets to watch. There’ll always be flagship models and folding screens, but if you want a solid all-rounder that won’t break the bank, then you should check this phone out.
